Burning
by R Amythest
Summary: Micaiah prepares to commit war crimes. She tells herself it's for a good cause. Short one-shot.


I'm dwelling on this part of the story because the game wouldn't. Comments highly appreciated. I don't own Fire Emblem.

* * *

That night Micaiah dreamt of burning pegasi.

She was used to horrible visions – no, those were always gentle to her mind even when most urgent, as if given in loving admonition by a protective mother.

Her dreams came from no one else, and Micaiah could spare herself no detail. Fire eating and melting flesh, animal screams from beasts and people alike, the sheer heat and sulfuric scent that found its way up to her where she stood on a cold stone pillar above the burning land. A hand reached from the flames, seizing her leg with fatal desperation. Alarmed, she tried to pull her leg away, but still the hand held as instinctively as an infant's until a stray arrow dragged it back down into the fire. Micaiah could hear that creature – person? – crying all throughout its fall.

She became aware in her hand she held a torch. This was Daein – yes, her country was an expanse of hateful fire. Beside her came a voice saying, "You'll save us, won't you?" A boy floated there, his Daeinese heritage strong in his blue hair, his arched nose. Before he could fall she reached to seize him from the flame, but the pillar was so small – and so they both fell – white feathers immolating to clouds of soot like the pegasi, like the Serenes people – and Micaiah felt the fire consuming her, damning her – for Daein, for Daein.

Dawn. Micaiah's head ached. She felt awake as if she hadn't fallen asleep at all. The light from the angled window cut the ceiling into two halves. She stared at that piece of reality in her quiet room and the fear evaporated from her as if it had never been there.

She slipped from between the covers, walking stoically to the bureau across the room even though the chill of winter crept from the stone floor into her feet. She unfolded her royally sanctioned outfit and clasped on all its layers and tassels. A familiar blue ribbon in her hair. A heavy red brooch over her heart. A brief trip to the washroom to clean the salt from her face.

In the conference room, Sothe leaned against the far wall like a rogue, his arms crossed before him like a general. He nodded at Micaiah while the others in the room – the important people once far above her station – made a show of bowing to her. Micaiah waved for them to sit. "You all know the plans we discussed yesterday." The map and the wooden pieces were still positioned on the central table. A row of tokens depicting bows trailed the edge of a canyon. Such an unfeeling representation, as if it were simply a game. "Based on the information we had, we concluded that their evasion will take them somewhere though this branch of roads..." She glanced up and rows of important eyes were upon her, waiting, expecting. "I haven't learned more." A mix of important sneers, important impatience, and important sympathy arose from her audience. No, she hadn't any important visions. Just dreams of endless burning.

The meeting rehashed their plan, the oil, the fire, the arrows. The council asked for more and more contingencies, as if nothing would go by the plan. What if they encountered the main laguz forces? That would necessitate a retreat. And if the force came upon them too abruptly? Then they would fail. The important council members stared at her with arrogant despair.

Micaiah found release from their judgment afterward in the almost-barren gardens with Sothe. Someone of lower rank did the packing. She could hear echoes over the palace wall of the troops gathering, officers scrambling about to keep order. "It's the only plan that could work, Sothe." He said nothing, walking beside her with invisible footsteps. "There's no other way."

Sothe was quiet for too long before he said, "Micaiah, I'll always support you." Through a muddy field of static, she felt Sothe's turmoil pricking at her back.

"I know you don't like it, Sothe..." Her words lingered in anticipation of an argument not yet ready to bloom. She rested herself before the marble fountain, exhaling and leaning against its cool rim. The view should have been nice, but military struggle and the bite of late fall left the gardens without life. No one chose to enjoy them. Solitude became the only reason for resting there.

Sothe, his gangly limbs too long to join Micaiah on the ground, sat by her on the rim of the fountain. He still didn't speak. His support was his only promise. It was enough for her to proceed. Sothe didn't have to agree. No one completely agreed with what she was about to do. What she had to do. And yet if there were to be a single person in the world to absolve her plan, it wouldn't have been herself, no, but Sothe. He sat silently with his scarf dangling into the water. She wondered if it, for him, was just the matter of the laguz army's cause. She wondered if he dreamt of pegasi burning.

"You don't have to do this," she told him. She could set a child empress alight, but not the conscience of her beloved.

Sothe shook his head, frowning down at her. "I mean it. We're not going to be separated again." He shifted a bit and the chilly wet threads of his scarf slid back into the air. "I'll do it, Micaiah." So he dreamt too, quietly to keep his burden from her. Had he aged so much already? She wished he never had to know.

Micaiah had learned too much about herself in the last few months. She could feed the slaughter of a race of people. She could kill those she did not hate but stood in her path. That unnatural calm that followed her about since morning stayed with her, made itself at home in her heart. She could set fire to a fourteen-year-old girl and her retinue of a hundred people.

How would it feel to be claimed by the dark god? Little by little, or all at once? Would it come for her in death, or would it not wait until then? Was it already there to claim her, bringing sulfur to her dreams? Would she know – or would she, unfeelingly, destroy again and again without remorse as it became second nature, just as terrible as the senators of Begnion she opposed?

She was startled to feel Yune landing on her shoulder. "Where am I now, Yune?" she murmured, in a voice she hoped Sothe couldn't hear. "Is it because of this that I'm losing my powers? Has the Goddess decided to that I no longer deserve them?" Yune puffed up her chest and chirped in response. Micaiah couldn't understand.

Trumpet tones drifted over the castle walls. Sothe didn't move yet, saying, "We should get going."

"Yes. Let's go."

She left the garden, the castle, the city, with the feeling that each step she took, she took irrevocably – further from Nevassa, but with the banner of Daein above her head, with the people in their heavy winter rags watching her march like a miracle. She smiled and waved to them, knowing that each part of herself that she fed to the flames would sustain these people –

She burned each night until the dark god awoke.


End file.
